Story: Stephanie Gilder, Sarah Johnston and Madison Tate
As part of Professor Alan Abitbol’s Online & Digital PR class
May 1, 2014
Many businesses, including Whole Foods and Kate Spade, are turning to social media to increase profits and brand recognition. The use of social media by businesses enables them to further their reach and bring in new customers. Social media also allows businesses to build relationships through interacting with their customers. In doing so, businesses can see an increase in profits and brand awareness. Two social media platforms that are increasingly being used more and more are Pinterest and Wanelo.
Pinterest is a social media site that lets people, mostly women, create and share collections, or “boards,” of visual bookmarks, also called “pins.” People use pins to do things like plan trips and projects, organize events, or save articles and recipes. There are many advantages to using Pinterest as a business. First, it can help a business establish authority in its particular field or industry. Businesses can provide relevant information and education to their followers as well as promote their own products. Pinterest also allows brands to expand their reach by using group boards and collaborating with other popular pinners with a large following. Most importantly, Pinterest can drive traffic to the business’ website. By clicking on a pin from a business’ website, pinners can go directly to the website and purchase products. Pinterest is also available as a mobile app, making it even easier to buy on the go.
Wanelo is another site that is taking an innovative approach to e-commerce. Registered as a site in 2006, it has almost 6 million registered users; 4 million of which are active users daily, yielding 8 million saved items daily. It is like Pinterest, but extended further in that shoppers can actually purchase products from the site, where on Pinterest they are limited to pinning items onto specific boards basically just to keep them in mind. Wanelo allows their shoppers to select different items and save them to boards with links directly on the site or allowing the items to be purchased directly after saving it. This can be helpful for brands that want to expand their business in a new and trending way, like they can on Pinterest. The company has also gone mobile, which allows customers to access Wanelo anywhere and make purchases from their phone. This app is huge for the Wanelo brand, being the No. 1 app with more than 5 million installations on smart phones.
Businesses are also benefitting from these social sharing sites in the sense that retail companies now basically have a free online catalog for consumers to obtain instantly. Perks such as auto-fill forms, which take a customer’s information over time and save it, leaving the consumer satisfied that they are not required to type in credit card or address information each time they feel the need to shop. Wanelo and Pinterest are also useful social listening tools for retail companies. The opportunity to track and learn about their consumers, enabling them to cater specifically to their interests, in turn, generates more revenue.
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